About Me

My photo
Hi, I'm Darryll and I live in Pullman, Washington with my wife and two kids. I'm a licensed Architect and am employed as a Project Manager at Washington State University. In addition, I have my own business doing residential designs in the greater Palouse area. I am a self-taught pianist, song-writer and singer and am involved in the music department at my local church.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

01-02-10 - New Year's Eve

Wow – life can get crazy in a hurry. I had “left notice” that I would be out of it – electronically speaking – for a bit as I was on vacation and was planning on spending more time relaxing and hanging with family than blogging. Well – as soon as we got back in town, we had a major offer on our house that we’ve had on the market for about 6 months. If things happen as fast as they are threatening to, we may have to find a place to rent and meet with a builder within the next couple of days.

So – I’ll be doing my best to start blogging again, but it may be sporadic here and there, but I’ll still do my part to continue to reminisce about the ‘70s.


I thought I’d share about how we used to spend New Year’s Eve growing up. Growing up in a family of four kids, we liked spending time together and hung out doing family-type things all the time. We combined some of our favorite things on New Year’s Eve. Mom and Dad would go out to dinner and a show and we would get the house to ourselves.


Of utmost importance was listening to the Casey Kasem year-end countdown. I think that it started around 6pm and, of course, ended at midnight. We all had our guesses as to what the number one song was going to be and ended up with bragging rights for the year if we were right.


We combined this with what we came to call the “3 P’s of New Year’s EvePizza, Pop and Puzzles. We had a great recipe for homemade pizza and we’d make up a few of them. Pop was essential and with a lot less to choose from back then, it was either Coke, 7-Up or Root Beer.


And puzzles… that’s where we really had fun.

If you are a REAL puzzle worker, you know that there are people who know how to work puzzles, and there are those who don’t. WE know how to work puzzles: We turn all the pieces over before we start; we build the entire edge before anything else; we LOOK at the puzzle to figure out where pieces go and only pick up pieces that we put in. It’s a lot different than the way a lot of others work puzzles, but it makes all the difference if you’re a REAL puzzle worker.


While this sounds pretty tame, or maybe even lame, it was a lot of fun for us kids. The fun ending to the night was, of course, having bottle rocket fights with the neighbors, all in good fun, of course.


3 comments:

Tom Rupe said...

Bottle Rocket Fights? Be careful, you'll put your eye out!

Do you remember the pizzas that came in a box? All the ingredients including to make shoe leather type pizza, right in your very home!

Blast from the Past said...

Even without the "protect-our-children-from-everything-fun-because-they-might-get-hurt" police that are so prevalent and vocal today, we all got through childhood with our eyes intact, didn't we? :)

I don't recall the Pizza mix that we used being at all leathery... we used Appian Way, and it was great. My mom put the best toppings on it - it was quite a treat for us!

Unknown said...

Okay, Darryll's sis weighing in here. Those New Years Eve music countdowns and puzzle parties are still amongst my very favorite childhood memories. We'd crank the music up so loud and sometimes Mom and Dad would ruin the party by getting home early. Don't forget, we'd still be munching on the leftover Christmas cookies and treats too. As you've already mentioned, we always had an excess of food on Christmas eve and it usually lasted well into the New Year. And yes, the Shermans know how to work puzzles! It takes major patience for any of us to work puzzles with those who don't know how to do it right.